Startup Blogs

Apart from the Startup Owl’s very own, here are some you may find helpful and/or inspiring:

  • Enterprise Council on Small Business Insider–lots of data and stats get posted here.
  • Small Business America from Huffington Post
  • How to Change the World is Guy Kawasaki’s blog. As well as having been an ‘Apple original’, he runs Garage Technology Ventures, a VC company. His blog is something that takes a good chunk of his time and unlike some that are quickly moribund, he follows the blogging ‘rules’ of regular posting, lots of interest, many links, acknowledgment of others. It is so good that he can get away with sometimes having very long posts stuffed with pictures (by him).
  • Sustainability by Design–John Ehrenfeld’s wonderful blog—full of deep insights on business sustainability. I would say that about a faculty colleague (we both teach on the same MBA program)!
  • YoungEntrepreneur.com was launched in 1999 and has grown to become one of the largest online forum communities for entrepreneurs worldwide.  The blog could be a good source for you.
  • The Entrepreneurial Mind is written by Jeff Cornwall of Belmont University, where he runs the Center for Entrepreneurship.
  • The Next Billion brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.
  • The Fresh Standard has conversations on the art of venturing by Jordan Bowman. He appeals to people like small business owners, freelancers, bloggers, artists and nonprofit leaders.
  • Venture Blog is about entreprenurship and venture capital, by David Hornik of August Capital.
  • Startup Professionals is written by Marty Zwilling whose passion is nurturing the development of entrepreneurs by providing first-hand mentoring, funding assistance, and business plan development.
  • Jeffrey Hollender’s Blog: the founder of Seventh Generation, the environmentally-friendly household products company is now a consultant on sustainability and related strategy processes. While not strictly a ‘startup’ blog, there is much for entrepreneurs to learn here.
  • Startup Muse: Alexander Muse’s blog–he has started many businesses, some big successes and some big failures; he currently runs the barcode scanning/comparison shopping app business, ShopSavvy.
  • Seeing Both Sides is Jeffrey Bussgang’s blog; he is an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist and author of Mastering the VC Game.

Six reasons why a startup should have a blog

  1. It will differentiate your business. Make sure you grab your audience and that yours is the ‘reference’ blog in your field.
  2. As I suggested above, it is not difficult to do, though it requires effort to do well and to make sure that is it well optimized for blog searches.
  3. It is your opportunity to say things about the business and your sector in an interesting way and without the formality of your website. It is a very direct form of communication.
  4. It can provide a very good way to speak with your customers and potential customers that is very ‘sticky’. You can be honest and create dialog.
  5. It is much less expensive than many forms of advertising and when you get proficient, it is much more effective. You can correct, update, revise very easily.
  6. The business will be found. This is especially true if you get smart at blog marketing. You can do many things to promote the blog for its own intrinsic value, that may prove difficult to do when you are directly promoting the business.

Once the blog gains traction, comments of visitors will help shape it and provide you with invaluable guidance on what the market is looking for.

Erin Blaskie of Business Blog Consulting says, “I have met a number of brand new people through my blog. Some of these people became clients, others were just frequent readers that became friends and others asked me to collaborate with them on special projects. By having a blog, you can become a place where people visit to learn about what it is you are writing about but also so that they can meet you, get to know you and someday work with you. You can build a community and allow other people to meet through you which then allows people to talk about you and get your name out there.”